Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot on gun control

"We already have the second strongest gun laws in the country. If we didn't do any bills, we would still be the second." - Steve Sweeney

Barbara Buono: Her ultra-liberal attacks on gun owners won't win her many votes in South Jersey.

Presumptive Democratic gubernatorial nominee Barbara Buono presented her plan for stricter gun laws last week. When asked by a reporter whether she thinks gun control will be a big issue in the fall campaign, the state senator replied, "I can’t even think about that. This transcends politics."

"Divest state assets from companies that manufacture, import, or sell ALL firearms, excluding those made for use by military or law enforcement."

Penalizing companies for selling legal items to legal buyers? That’s politics. And it’s bad politics as far as the Democrats in the southern part of the state are concerned. Most prominent among them is Senate President Steve Sweeney, a former ironworker from Gloucester County who comes from a culture where guns and their makers are held in high esteem.

One of these two is popular with gun owners - and it's not the one on the left.(Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger)

"We already have the second strongest gun laws in the country," said Sweeney when I spoke to him last week. "If we didn’t do any bills, we would still be the second."

We spoke just after a committee meeting Thursday at which bills reflecting his vision of reform were heard. It’s starkly different from that of Buono and the Democratic majority in the Assembly.

Sweeney’s willing to go along with them on one key reform, a streamlined system of background checks for gun purchasers employing a photo ID. A swipe of the card would permit an instant check against a database that could be updated daily. But he parts with them on the most contentious part of their package: a bill that would reduce magazine capacity from 15 bullets to 10.

"President Obama said Colorado’s approach is a national model," he said. "In Colorado, it’s 15."

And in New Jersey it’s going to stay 15 — at least unless Sweeney decides to commit political suicide. At the moment he is much more popular than the governor with the gun-rights crowd. He’ll need to preserve that popularity if he ever makes a move for higher office.

But that’s a long-term problem. He and other South Jersey Democrats face a much tougher problem this fall, when all 120 seats in the Legislature are up for grabs. The South Jersey Dems represent districts with plenty of hunters and target shooters.

Typical is Jeff Van Drew. Van Drew is a dentist from Cape May County who has kept his Senate seat in a largely rural district by running to the right of whatever Republican opposes him. But with Buono running 30 points behind Gov. Chris Christie in the polls, he might need some extra ammunition.

Sweeney’s given it to him — literally. One of the bills in that package is a measure sponsored by Van Drew concerning the state’s assault-weapons ban. Among the rifles listed as assault weapons is a .22-caliber rifle known as "the Boy Scout rifle." It was outlawed simply because the rifle’s feeding tube holds four more cartridges than the 15-bullet limit. Van Drew’s bill would rescind that ban.

Van Drew also put his name on a bill that would correct another flaw in current law. Gun owners can now be charged with a felony if they make any stops whatsoever while driving to or returning from hunting or target shooting. Van Drew’s bill would legalize reasonable diversions from the route.

Meanwhile even that background check bill would be more gun-owner-friendly in the Sweeney package. Under the current system, a purchaser needs to go through a new permitting process for every pistol he wants to buy, a process that can take up to five months.

"Nothing in my life has changed, but I have to go through all this paperwork again," said Sweeney.

The photo ID issued under his bill would be good for multiple pistol purchases. But note the use of the first-person in describing the gun owner’s dilemma. Now try to imagine Buono empathizing with a gun owner in that fashion.

Sweeney also opposes a provision in the Assembly bill banning the purchase of ammo over the internet. There’s already a federal law restricting sales to buyers who have federal firearms clearance, he said.

This flyer from Chris Christie's ill-fated 1995 campaign for state Assembly has cost him credibility with gun owners.

That’s the divide here, and Buono’s advocacy of divestment shows that it couldn’t be clearer. The manufacturers in question are already in compliance with state and federal law. Yet Buono wants to send them a message.

Just what that message is, I have no idea. But it’s unlikely to be a winning one with the voters this fall.

ADD: Just to give some idea of the sort of misconceptions about guns among the people who originally promoted that "assault weapons" ban under Jim Florio, check this excerpt from a 1990 New York Times article about the bill:

Peter C. Harvey, a special assistant attorney general who helped draft the legislation, said that to be considered an assault weapon under the bill, a firearm must reload itself each time it fires, have a barrel 16 to 22 inches long and have been designed to accept a detachable ammunition chamber, known as a magazine, in excess of 15 rounds.

The proposed legislation would make it a crime to buy, sell or own such a weapon in New Jersey.

''The fact is,'' Mr. Harvey said, ''nobody can really show a sporting or hunting purpose for having such a weapon.'' In New Jersey, he said, hunting is allowed only with a shotgun, and the shotgun cannot be loaded with more than three rounds of ammunition.

Either Harvey knew nothing about the bill he drafted or he was outright lying. As I noted above, the ban did not apply only to rifles with detachable magazines; it also banned the most common .22 caliber plinking gun out there, a Marlin that held 19 cartidges in a non-removable loading tube.

And as Sweeney pointed out when I spoke with him, once those 19 bullets are shot, it takes roughly forever to insert the next 19 of those tiny bullets into the tube.

It's bad enough Harvey was too incompetent to draft the bill he apparently thought he was drafting. Worse, even when that ban on the popular .22 came to light, the gun-control crowd in Trenton left it on the books. If anything good comes out of this most recent flap, it will be a reversal of that ban more than 20 years after it was enacted.